Not every business has a single person as the face of their brand, but it can be a powerful way to build a reputation and establish a market domain for those that do. While companies that have a team or plan to employ a team one day would do better to avoid linking the brand to one person, some event professionals are happy to be solopreneurs and take full ownership of their brand presence.
Using your face to represent your brand is also a smart strategy if you're looking to pivot to B2B services and move into the education side of the industry. Perhaps you're a caterer who feels called to help other caterers grow their business. In that case, it would make sense to tie in your role as an educator with your personal experience in the trenches.
People want to do business with real people. When you're the face of your brand, you attach a human quality to your company that starts building trust and recognition from the start. Everything from behind-the-scenes peeks to snapshots showcasing your work will be associated with you as a person, helping develop stronger connections with your followers.
Ultimately, your choice to be the face of your brand lies in your big picture goals. What do you hope to achieve in the future? Are you seeking to grow your personal brand as a thought leader in the industry, or are you more focused on developing a business beyond your identity? If expansion is in your future, you might consider creating a "face" for your brand that represents your full team. On the other hand, if you're perfectly content to remain solo, you can lean in fully to your role as the chief brand ambassador.
Here are some powerful ways to embrace your brand and inject your personality into your outward presence.
Go Live
If you feel comfortable being on video, going live on social media is one of the best tactics for blending your personal identity with your business’ brand. Start sharing Instagram Stories and Facebook Live videos to give your followers a taste of your personality. If you want to go the extra mile, you may consider developing long-form video content (like educational webinars or Q&As) to post on YouTube. From there, you can cross-post them on your Facebook page and through Instagram TV to ensure you're getting the broadest reach possible.
If your brand presence spans your whole team, get everyone in on the action, and encourage your employees to share their video content. Video is the next best thing to meeting in person, as it provides a platform for you to help people get to know you as the human being that you are.
Keep It, Professional
At the end of the day, you represent a business. You’re hoping that people will believe in your brand and spend their money on your products or services. While you do want to be relatable and welcoming, you also need to maintain professionalism in your branded content (and your personal content if you’re the face of the brand!).
You don't need to wear a suit and take on a corporate persona; sometimes, you need to rein it in a bit if you want to appeal to a particular client type. For example, perhaps you don't mind a bit of explicit language (zero judgement if that’s you, I’ve been known to drop a four letter word too!) in your day-to-day life. While this might be acceptable in person, it's not the smartest idea to swear on camera if you're trying to earn new high-end clients. It might be part of your personality, but it does not need to become a part of your brand.
At the end of the day, your business is not about you (even if you’re the “face”) — it’s about your clients and how you can meet them in a way that serves their needs and draws them into your sales and marketing funnel.
Outsource Smartly
If you're ready to take social media off your plate, it can be challenging if you're the only face of your brand. You might feel like you have to be connected all day, every day, to make an impact. That’s not to say you can’t share the load with someone else. You've trained your audience to expect to see you, so you need to be the one creating the content; however, that doesn't mean you have to be the one remembering to post every day.
Instead, it would be best to intentionally create your content before outsourcing to an employee or contractor. It might mean setting aside one day a month to record four YouTube videos or 30 Instagram Story snippets that you can handoff to your social media manager. As the face of your brand, this is the only way to outsource social media—otherwise, you risk muddying the waters and diluting your brand identity.
Being the face of your brand can certainly be a successful strategy for solopreneurs, but that doesn't mean it's your only option. Not every business owner wants to be in the spotlight, and that's OK—you can still be successful. Some people are camera-shy and prefer to keep their hands busy behind the scenes, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Just remember that being on camera isn't about you; it's about providing your client with valuable information that will help them make a purchasing decision. You're just the purveyor of a message, so as long as you have that down, you're good to go. As a business owner or manager, you don't need to be "the face" of your brand, but you do need to create a face for clients to look for and start building that Know, Like, Trust factor that turns a follower into a client.
